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Family time. I'll mostly enjoy the Memorial Day weekend with my soon-to-be graduating daughter. I'm fairly good at mentally blocking out the fact that she'll be leaving the house for college next fall (dwelling on it makes me infinitely sad, so I opt not to dwell on it), but I realize how incredibly precious the few weekends we have with her under our roof will be during the next few months.

So...I'll be drinking a few beers and sharing a lot of laughs with my family. And thinking about how cool it will be to watch football games with her at Michigan Stadium next fall.

My dad owned a beat up, 1960's Chevy truck. Similar to the one pictured below, but much more rust. And it was bright orange. It shook violently if you went faster than 45 mph. It's one purpose in life? Hauling wood. That truck was idle 99.99999% of the time, but it annually served it's purpose in late summer and early fall on wood cutting runs to stock up winter heating fuel. In retrospect, a truly underappreciated vehicle.

Also, I was amazed to discover that most families outside of the U.P. didn't have a wood hauling truck.

Thanks for the update. That was my fear. The aftermath pictures were horrific. I can't imagine the logistics involved just cleaning up (hauling waste materials off the island must be a complicated process), much less rebuilding.

St. John is amazing. I would highly recommend it. My only word of caution: any idea how infrastructure and beaches have rebounded after the horrible hurricane season? I saw major damage pictures from the Coral Bay side that showed major devastation. I assume reconstruction will be slow since everything is slower down there.

I'll play "what if" here. What if the Tigers are sniffing 1st place in mid-July in a dreadful division? How does that affect potential trade scenarios regarding the few semi-marketable players on the roster? I assume Liriano, Greene, possibly Castellanos and Fulmer will still be shopped if the right package of prospects is offered.

My biggest hope was for a Zimmerman bounce back year that made him semi-marketable (yes, salary would be have to swallowed regardless), but those hopes seem to be dashed again.

Otherwise, this team has been fun to follow. JaCoby Jones is such a spark plug. I hope he can sustain a BA above .250-.260, because his speed and defense are top notch.

Last time I went into a dealership and asked about manual transmission possibility on a new model, the salesperson looked at me like I was a disfigured alien life form asking questions that do not make sense on planet Earth. My last two vehicles have been sans manual transmission for "family reasons", and I miss my manual transmission dearly.

If your kid is choosing between some random northern michigan directional school that nobody south of traverse city has ever heard of and being a skilled laborer they should choose skilled laborer.

I was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula, but was lucky enough to attend UM. I have many family members and friends, however, that attended Northern Michigan University. NMU is the only directional public school north of Traverse City, but you should count Lake Superior State and Michigan Tech as the other public schools north of the bridge. I know many NMU graduates who are gainfully employed in a variety of stable careers with excellent wage growth possibilities. Is NMU as prestigious as UM? No. But it's not the backwater morass that you paint it out to be.

I will slightly pick nits regarding this statement. I consider myself to possess at least average intelligence. My UM COE undergrad experience and multiple grad school stints were far from incredibly easy. I worked like a dog to earn decent grades. I wouldn't trade my experiences for anything, but it sure wasn't easy.

I love exploring new cities, so I typically try to carve out some time to randomly navigate new surroundings and learn about other places. I usually don't have an agenda - I just explore. Avoid Applebee's and take a chance on the local watering hole down the street.

If I'm traveling with others, I still like to explore alone. I need a break from the work crowd. I like most people I work with, but work topics inevitably surface during dinner or drinks. After 8-10 hours in a conference hearing nothing about work-related topics, I need detachment time. So I often explore alone.

When my children were younger, I used my work travel down time to sleep for 7-8 hours (assuming hotel noise didn't interrupt sleep). So sleep was a high priority item during travel stints.

Finally, I find that I am often more productive on the road. The office can be stifling. Travel often invigorates me, so I go into manic mode and get a lot of shit done!

I was in 7th grade. Gangly, peach fuzz mustache, and incredibly smitten with a neighborhood 16 year old. Her parents had money, so she was gifted a 16th birthday present in the form of a blue Pontiac Fiero, circa mid-1980's. Something like the picture below. She was a sight to behold with shades on and hair waving in the summer wind. Naturally, it was my dream car.

As a middle school coach, I witnessed some abhorrent behavior by other coaches. Absolutely abhorrent. I had two golden rules: 1. do not disrepect the referees and 2. play through adversity without complaining. Whenever a player felt slighted by a lack of a foul call, I reminded them of the 13 times they fouled opposing players without getting called. I went out of my way to thank the referees for their service before and after each game.

Despite my coaching experience, I will probably start reffing once my children leave the nest. Seems like good community service, a nice way to get exercise, and some extra beer money cash.

My family of 4 will also attend. Would you consider increasing your 6-8 ticket allotment to 10-12?!

I'm interested in this same topic since we will be meeting at least 2-3 other groups for the SMU game. My assumption is that it's near impossible to obtain larger contiguous ticket chunks, so I'm mentally prepared for our group to tailgate together before and after the game, then split our separate ways during the game.

I randomly watched the first episode a few months ago. I was dead tired from a long day at work and needed a Netflix diversion. I had heard some mild buzz about this series awhile back, so I tried it. Needless to say, I blazed through 3 seasons in 3 weeks of semi-binge watching.